When adults dream of tropical islands, they envision sun and surf. Youngsters visiting the islands of Poptropica opt instead for battling spies, skydiving or learning about history and the wide world's wonders.

'I learned that the Great Wall of China is really big,' says eight-year-old Olivia Taylor of Iola, Kansas. 'I thought it was kind of small, like a castle, but it's really big.'

Poptropica is published by Family Education Network, a part of Sandbox Networks, Inc. Poptropica was selected as an Official Honoree in the 17th Annual Webby Awards in the Games category.

Poptropica is an online island world created by Pearson to entrance young people in a vibrant world of exploration, knowledge and old-fashioned fun - but without any of the dangers of some social networking sites. Kids entering the site create their own 'avatar,' or character, by choosing their clothes, hairstyle, mouth, eyes and other features, and they are randomly assigned a peculiar name like Nice Skunk or Messy Dragon or Ridiculous Crumb - but the youngsters never reveal any personal information or email addresses.

Since its launch in September 2007, Poptropica has had more than 35 million unique users and seen the creation of more than 70 million avatars. On one recent weekend day, 259,000 kids were on Poptropica.

'I was mowing my lawn and the idea came to me,' says Jeff Kinney, design director for Pearson's Family Education Network, which is based in Boston. Mr. Kinney designed Poptropica after considering the strengths and shortcomings of other websites in which youngsters interact with others: 'The idea was to take everything that's good in the multiplayer online world and make it as safe as possible for kids.'

So kids visiting Poptropica always are anonymous, as the only information asked for is whether they are boys or girls, and their age. After choosing their avatar, youngsters can 'battle' other avatars in games ranging from Paint War to Sky Dive to Hoops (basketball), or they can instead opt to 'chat' with another avatar by clicking on prepared questions such as 'do you wear glasses' or 'do you like amusement parks?' and receiving answers like 'no, but I sometimes wear sunglasses' or 'I like the kiddie rides.' The database now has 600 questions and 1,800 answers.

'I like that it's not chatting with other strangers online, but pre-set answers that they click on,' says Megan Christensen of Valhalla, New York, whose daughter Cedi, 8, and son Connor, 6, are Poptropica devotees. 'Also I like that the 'battles' aren't violent. It is such a nice feeling to know that they are fighting spies, spiders or dogs - things that don't look that scary.'

Youngsters visit seven different islands - including Spy Island and Shark Tooth Island - where they battle B.A.D. (the Bald and Dangerous Organisation) or explore a shark museum. They learn that sharks can bite with a force of 6.5 tons per square inch, along with the reassurance that more people are killed each year by pigs than by sharks.

On Time Tangled Island, the most popular, the kids' avatars might journey back to Philadelphia in 1776 as the Declaration of Independence is being drafted, only to bump into an animated Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. A click of the mouse takes their avatar to the year 831 and a Viking warship, or the Mali Empire in 1387, or inventor Thomas Edison's workshop in Menlo Park, New Jersey, in 1877. Clicking on a 'Fact Monster' icon provides more detailed information on everything from ancient Aztec civilisation to Leonardo Da Vinci.

'I didn't know who climbed Mt. Poptropica where to build the fire house. Everest, or even what Mt. Everest was' before learning about it on Poptropica, says Cedi Christensen.

Since its inception, Poptropica has launched a new island every six to eight weeks, and the next one is Big Nate Island in early 2009. Each island takes an average of four hours to investigate, so kids of all ages come back many times to explore the various nooks and crannies.

'Poptropica appeals to a much wider age range than we expected,' says Jess M. Brallier, publisher and general manager of Family Education Network. 'We expected a core age group of seven to 10, but this is kicking in at age four and going to 14 or 15.'

While Poptropica users are evenly split between girls and boys, there are some gender-based differences: girls by a margin of three-to-one tend to change their avatar's appearance from time to time, while girls are twice as likely to 'chat' than 'battle.'

Many websites for kids promote toys or entertainment brands, but Poptropica is different. 'Poptropica is publishing - to kids,' says Mr. Brallier. 'Soon, fresh content will be pushed out to millions of Poptropica kids on a daily basis. The publishing will come to them, not vice-versa.'

Poptropica was designed to appeal globally, so the quests and the settings are not country specific - and there are users so far in more than 70 countries including 20,000 visits a month from China and 1,000 per month from Lithuania. Pearson is looking into adapting Poptropica for English-language training materials, because the simple dialogue can be easily translated.

Poptropica Educational Games For Kids

In early 2009, Poptropica will begin to charge for premium services - early access to new islands, for example. This will provide an additional revenue source while keeping the core of the site free, assuring that Poptropica will publish to even more kids while also strengthening its brand and licensing value.

'It makes them think,' says Jen Taylor, mother of Olivia and her Poptropica-mad sisters Abigail, 10, and Ella, 6. 'It's not just a sit-there-and-do-nothing type game. They can talk to Thomas Jefferson one day, and go to Egypt and meet an Egyptian the next day.'

Check out the other version of the post, on the Poptropica Help Blog, by clicking right here!

Hey there, Clawtropicans! It’s me, Purple Claw, hereto talk about a question I’ve been asking myself for a while now, that being – you guessed it – is Poptropica Worlds a more educational game, as in, more educational than the original Poptropica? Let’s get started with the analysis!

Poptropica game. To answer this question, we have to do a litle research, or as I like to call it, pop down memory lane…

Poptropica 24 carrot guide. 24 Carrot Island is Poptropica’s 4th island, released on June 6, 2008. Before 24 Carrot was released, Monster Carnival Island appeared on the map as “coming soon”. However, it was replaced by 24 Carrot Island with no explanation. You can read more about this. Welcome to 24 Carrot Island, Poptropica's 4th island, released in 2008! This island is full of mystery and intrigue as you enter your mission to help determine what the evil Dr. Hare is up to! Your first task is to return Whiskers the cat to her owner, Charlie. In 24 Carrot, an evil rabbit is terrorizing the town and all it's citizens by stealing carrots, which is leaving the economy in shambles! It's your duty to defeat Dr. Hare, and bring peace back to the island. This is a very exciting island and longer than most other early ones.

Free Educational Games For Kids

The Poptropica Creators have always claimed Poptropica is an educational game, but is really true? Well, yeah. Or, at least it started out like that — Poptropica’s first three islands were pretty educational. Here’s why:

Poptropica, a virtual world for kids to travel, play games, compete in head-to-head competition, and communicate safely. Kids can also read books, comics, and see movie clips while they play. Create a poptropica account. Jan 07, 2013  my poptropica account is username: Ali786 ( capital A rest of the letters are lowercase) password: poptropicaaccount ( no finger spaces) there is no membership no credits only 3 islands won this account is all yours be free to do what you want with it and also when you login to this change the password to this account thank you! Sep 23, 2010  How to Create a Poptropica Account. This article tells you how to create an account on the game website named Poptropica. It's really easy and will take you only a few minutes to sign up on this fun,loved,popular. Oct 06, 2012  How to Make an Account on Poptropica. Do you want to play on Poptropica.com? A world where you travel in a hot air balloon and develop your character, solving mysteries from island to island? Here's how to make your account!

Early Poptropica and Shark Tooth Island had two very similar buildings: they both had museums. One being an art museum, and another full of shark facts; you get the idea.

The Pop Art museum is pretty much like any art museum, but what stood out the most was were the questions you could ask each artist — questions about their drawings, their personal life (such stalkers we are), etc. It’s pretty fun. The Shark Museum on the other hand simply had facts about sharks, that found myself pretty interested in them. That was literally my absolute favorite part of the island.

Time Tangled Island was – and still is – one of Poptropica’s most educational islands, and unlike the first two island mentioned, Time Tangled had a different method. When it still wasn’t a SUI, you could find some circles leading to Fact Monster articles, a Poptropica sponsor at that time (Fact Monster is an educational website where you can get help with homework and stuff, it’s actually pretty fun).

This was a new thing for Poptropica, but it didn’t last long with the release of 24 Carrot Island, and I’m glad, since those Fact Monster monstrosities can really get in the way of your gameplay, and could be pretty annoying at times. Glad I never got to experience them. 😛

Unfortunately (or maybe fortunately for some other players) the following islands stopped being too educational (examples: 24 Carrot, Super Power, Big Nate etc.), and I don’t even know why. Maybe they were too busy to make museums and/or overall educational islands at that time.

This all changed with the release of Counterfeit Island, which fell in the ”museum-kind-of-educational-island” category. The following islands of Poptropica weren’t all educational – but there are quite a lot, such as Red Dragon, Mythology, Arabian Nights, etc.

So, we can all now probably agree that Poptropica is an educational game, but… what about Poptropica Worlds?

Well, since Poptropica Worlds has a whole of two islands as a whole (excluding Home Island, since there isn’t any adventure or quests, but maybe decorating your home counts as an adventure, I don’t know), so I can’t say much about it, but I’ll give it a shot.

Well, just like Poptropica’s first two islands, Poptropica Worlds also follows the ”museum” method, and it does much better job than Early Pop and Shark Tooth did.

Crisis Caverns’ museum is the Visitors’ Center, which has facts about the supervolcano, and other facts that inspired the island to be made. Is was an important part of the island, since it kinda moved the plot forward by giving (spoilers) that park ranger the elk antlers. The Pop Art museum, on the other hand, had nothing in common with the island (well, it had one thing in common if you count the fact that it’s the ‘pop’ art museum), but besides that, it didn’t add anything to the plot, so it made things less interesting…

The Reboot of 24 Carrot is simply gorgeous — it’s literally what made me like PW is the first place! The plot was improved and the visuals were really pretty. But, since Poptropica Words still isn’t such a social game, in the place of the common room there was a carrot museum, which isn’t really all bad. And just like on Crisis Caverns, this museum also moved the plot forward.

Well, as of now, I’d have to say… drumroll please… Poptropica Original.

Poptropica Educational Games Free

Why? Well, simply because it has more islands, which means more variety. But to the direction PW is going, I believe Poptropica Worlds will be considered a pretty educational game, since the island museums are pretty fun and don’t get in the way of your gameplay.

Whether you like Poptropica being an educational game or not, the Creators made a really good job on it on Poptropica Worlds.

Thanks for reading this analysis! If you enjoyed reading it please leave a comment in the comment section below. That was PC, signing out! Luv ya guys!

Poptropica Educational Games

🐾 Purple Claw 🐾
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